Look Again

27

JOEY

Iwalk back to my apartment after saying goodbye to the kids and to Dexter. Everyone seems so excited and so ready. For me, I think I’m most looking forward to the next normal day.

Not sure when that will be, exactly. I’m not sure what normal looks like anymore.

But I remember the last normal day.

I think about that day more than I should. The last normal day. The day before I realized that something is definitely really wrong with me.

At the time, there was nothing particularly important about it. I’d gone to Fernando’s Gallery to check on my exhibit. He’d told me that I’d sold a few more from the mother-and-child series, the ones I’d shot behind the filmy cloth. They were selling so well, even after we’d priced them so much higher than I thought we should, and I was pleased. Proud. Fernando, who is really Frank Black from Flatbush, seemed to know the market. And he was interested in higher sales prices for my work because his gallery fee was half of any sales price. As he said, “I promise to love fifty percent of every piece you sell.”

That day I sat in a café, watching people walk by, sipping a designer spa water with cucumbers and limes floating around in it. The best benefit of being a professional artist is the requirement to sit and drink in inspiration daily.

If I’d known that it was the last normal day, what would I have done differently? The question’s pointless, but that doesn’t stop me from asking it. Over and over. Would I have spent the day looking closer? Staring harder? Taking mental snapshots of things I don’t ever want to forget? Should I have made a list of all the sights I don’t want to lose? Would I have stood outside in the golden hour before sunset and watched the way light touched wood and metal and brick and skin?

Instead, I’d called my sister and regretted it. Amanda gave me a hard time (again) about letting my inherent intelligence sink to the depths of my “little hobby.” Amanda, MBA and owner of a successful upscale furniture boutique, was sure if I could run my own gallery, I could keep the profits. She didn’t (and doesn’t) understand the draw of letting any of my earnings go to someone else.

After hearing the eleventh iteration of “don’t waste your money or your mind,” I was tired. I hung up and took a nap, which turned out to last thirteen hours. When I woke, it was morning and I hit the gym. Twenty minutes into my run on the treadmill, my sleep-hangover headache took my breath away, and I lost sight in my left eye.

By now, two years later, I’m almost used to it. I nearly take it in stride now when my head feels like it’s going to split and my vision goes dark. I learn coping mechanisms (a phrase that sounds like it should be way more physical: mechanisms should have gears, need oiling, and come with repair manuals). I can force myself to breathe deeply instead of hyperventilating. I almost always find my way to a bathroom before vomiting from pain. I repress the inherent part of my personality that wants to tell everyone—people I know and people I don’t—what is happening to my brain and my nerves. I learn to function as though I am not living on the edge of a chasm. I keep the dramatic what-ifs and the terror-filled imaginings for the nighttime hours, and I spend my days creating art and teaching the willing (and the less willing) Chamberlain kids how to look and see differently.

And sometimes I remind myself how to do the same.

But I need this chair position. I need to entrench myself into this school in every possible way. I need them all to need me, so that if, or when, I can’t do the job of an artist anymore, I will still be needed as a teacher.

Ginger knocks on my front door as I finish tying up my hair. I’ve put it up and taken it down so many times in the past thirty minutes that I might as well put on a hat and call it a day, but I holler for her to come in as I check the back of my head in the mirror. I hold a compact in my hand and twist my head left to right, hoping that the blank spots in my vision aren’t hiding any weird lumps or wonky hairs.

“Come here,” Ginger says and tugs on the scarf tying my ponytail. “Perfect,” she says.

I know it’s nothing like perfect, but I appreciate her support. I link my arm with hers and say, “Ready to experience the greatest exhibit you’ve ever seen?”

“If you mean stand around for three hours pretending to like student art, then yes, I am.”

“Four and a half.”

Ginger swears expressively. “Four and a half? HOURS? You’re kidding, right?”

I shake my head. “You don’t have to stay the whole time. I mean, you don’t have to come at all, but I think you’ll like what you see.”

“You overestimate my interest in nice things. I would so rather watch trashy reality TV shows. That would (and has, and does) make five hours fly by.” We laugh as I lock up my door, and we head down toward the old chapel.

Ginger tells me a funny story about a kid who decided his best bet for Ivy League notice would be to reconstruct a famous experiment backward, to try and unmake an alloy into its constituent parts, but he neglected to get permission for lab time. Ginger discovered him lurking behind a lab table when the smoke alarm rang to her phone.

“It’s called liquation, and it makes a fierce mess,” she says. “He doesn’t go here anymore.”

All my favorite Ginger stories end with this line. She has me laughing hard by the time we enter the chapel.

The doors are open, which suggests that Dexter has not only arrived, but done the preparation he promised to do. We step inside, and I gasp.

The lighting is perfect. Framed paintings and photos hang from clips in rows, rising near the ceiling, but without any of the artwork seeming out of reach. I take a quick circuit around the displays, noting the last-minute addition of plants that might have come from the theater’s prop room, but look utterly natural in the space. As I move from one section to the next, I find myself seeing each piece with fresh eyes, every one of the kids’ artworks seamlessly leading to the next. As I approach the platform, I find Dexter flipping through sheet music at the piano, readying himself for his students to perform their songs. His usual bow tie is paired with a sweater vest in an argyle pattern, and I would bet money that his socks match. His curls are gelled into perfect cresting waves, and I’m jealous. Mr. Flawless Hair. Most Likely to be Coiffed. He looks amazing. I want to take his picture.

As usual.

Placing my hand on his shoulder, I lean down to whisper in his ear, but as I bend forward, he turns on the piano bench, fast, and cracks his forehead into my nose.

“Ow,” I moan, holding my face together with both hands. I try to make a subtle check to see if I’m bleeding. Not yet, thankfully.